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Jason Whitlock (Photo via Fox Sports)

While you may not have known the name Jason Whitlock before this month, chances are the name rings a bell. That’s because Whitlock is the FoxSports.com columnist quoted by Bob Costas last Sunday when Costas said that if Kansas City Chiefs player Jovan Belcher didn’t have a gun he and his girlfriend would still be alive. After that column, Whitlock also accused the NRA of being the new KKK. And that caught the attention of Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly. Now, the two are engaged in a war of words.

On Friday, Whitlock took some shots at O’Reilly, who Whitlock said had invited him on the show to defend his KKK remarks. Whitlock, however, wasn’t having any of it and infused racial references, implying O’Reilly was some type of overlord asking Whitlock to “dance” for him.

This issue is so dead in this country that the flag-waving, right-wing entertainment media have to drag up a non-political, non-voting sports columnist and a talented sports broadcaster as their straw men to justify their phony outrage. I don’t think I’ll be called before the Senate to speak on any toothless gun-control legislation the NRA lobby lets slip through a crack.

But it appears I was summoned to testify before Speaker of The Big House Bill O’Reilly, the FOX News entertainer. O’Reilly is fixated on the mistake I made on the Tom Joyner show. O’Reilly spent part of his Tuesday show telling his viewers that I was afraid to come on “The Factor” and discuss my views on the NRA, the Second Amendment and gun culture.

I’m a grown-ass man and it’s 2012. I don’t have to shuffle off to the Big House when summoned. O’Reilly is not Boehner, Pelosi or Obama. He’s a TV entertainer who has spent the weeks after the election crying about the end of “white establishment” America, the end of the days when an upstanding white man felt entitled to summon whomever he wanted whenever he wanted to the Big House to dance.

I don’t dance.

Every cable TV network requested that I consent to an interview this week. I declined all invitations. Only Speaker of the Big House O’Reilly attacked me for exercising my constitutional right of freedom. It’s been a tough week for me personally, and I chose to control my message by using my platforms — column and podcast.

On his Monday show, O’Reilly fired back, first calling Whitlock’s KKK comparison “insane” and then going on to blast the personal attack.

“Now, that is pure racism — nothing else,” O’Reilly said regarding Whitlock’s column. “Whitlock implying that I am some kind of slave overlord, and he gets away with that kind of garbage. In fact, he gets paid to spout it. Way beyond disgraceful. That’s poison, but not unusual. Hate speech now happening all the time. There comes a point when all good people must say enough. That point has now been reached in America. The Jason Whitlocks of the world deserve pity, but they also deserve to be exposed. They’re using base emotion to try to injure people. They are liars, and they are abusing freedom of speech. This stuff has got to stop.”